Our girl (9 years old) is suffering severe impaction. We were told it might be cancer, but there’s a chance it’s impaction. We have no means of affording the surgery or even the testing needed to determine the results exact cause. There is a large mass at the back/right side of her stomach (last vet ER said it was in her colon).
We haven’t put her down because she’s still active during the day. So we are using laxatives 1x/day (we were given 6x days worth, this is day 2), bathing 3x/day (with light massaging from armpits to vent, extra delicate around the mass), and switched to a liquid diet. We are confident she is going to begin to decline pretty soon and the mass seems too big for her to pass. The last time she took a solid poop was over a month ago and lately she struggles/strains and only releases very small squirts. We are going through these motions anyways and monitoring her condition, but we fear we will have to put our baby down.
Is there any recourse? Any rescue shelter we could relinquish her to get the help she needs? Even if that means we can’t get her back, that’s better than euthanizing her I think.
We’ve already spent more than we had trying to get answers at 2x ERs but basically the answer is “this mass could be a few things, but we need to test so we know which surgery to perform,” but we can’t afford the testing or the surgery even if we did figure it out. Since she’s still energetic during the day and seems to like the liquid food we are providing (though can usually only get 3ml in her each day) we want to give her the best fighting chance we can, and we believe she could come out on the other side, but we don’t have the means to give her the support she needs.
Is there anything else we could be doing? Anybody else we could be calling? We have 4x days of laxatives left and are going to have to make a tough decision this weekend when it runs out if she’s still with us. We don’t want her to suffer but we also don’t want to cut her down while she still has a fighting chance. If it is impaction is there anything else we could be doing to maybe break up the mass (as opposed to trying to get that tiny vent to pass something the size of a quarter? She had been getting regular checkups and last one was 6 months ago and she was healthy as an ox.
Please respect that this thread is about what can be done NOW, not what could or should have been done months ago. We are in Massachusetts, USA and will travel basically anywhere within MA if it gives her a fighting chance. We’ll do basically anything we can, we just don’t have thousands for surgery that may still kill her.
We haven’t put her down because she’s still active during the day. So we are using laxatives 1x/day (we were given 6x days worth, this is day 2), bathing 3x/day (with light massaging from armpits to vent, extra delicate around the mass), and switched to a liquid diet. We are confident she is going to begin to decline pretty soon and the mass seems too big for her to pass. The last time she took a solid poop was over a month ago and lately she struggles/strains and only releases very small squirts. We are going through these motions anyways and monitoring her condition, but we fear we will have to put our baby down.
Is there any recourse? Any rescue shelter we could relinquish her to get the help she needs? Even if that means we can’t get her back, that’s better than euthanizing her I think.
We’ve already spent more than we had trying to get answers at 2x ERs but basically the answer is “this mass could be a few things, but we need to test so we know which surgery to perform,” but we can’t afford the testing or the surgery even if we did figure it out. Since she’s still energetic during the day and seems to like the liquid food we are providing (though can usually only get 3ml in her each day) we want to give her the best fighting chance we can, and we believe she could come out on the other side, but we don’t have the means to give her the support she needs.
Is there anything else we could be doing? Anybody else we could be calling? We have 4x days of laxatives left and are going to have to make a tough decision this weekend when it runs out if she’s still with us. We don’t want her to suffer but we also don’t want to cut her down while she still has a fighting chance. If it is impaction is there anything else we could be doing to maybe break up the mass (as opposed to trying to get that tiny vent to pass something the size of a quarter? She had been getting regular checkups and last one was 6 months ago and she was healthy as an ox.
Please respect that this thread is about what can be done NOW, not what could or should have been done months ago. We are in Massachusetts, USA and will travel basically anywhere within MA if it gives her a fighting chance. We’ll do basically anything we can, we just don’t have thousands for surgery that may still kill her.